393: Isaac Hayes writes “Soul Man”
Depending on your age, it might be hard to tell which version of “Soul Man” you heard first. Did that chorus first imprint itself on your brain when the Blues Brothers performed it on SNL in 1978, eventually making a top 20 hit out of it? Or did you hear Sam & Dave’s original, a #1 R&B sensation back in ’67? Some will have to admit that their first serious exposure was the FILM Soul Man, starring C. Thomas Howell as a desperate would-be law student who takes magical blackening pills in order to take advantage of Harvard’s affirmative action policy (Sam performs the song on the soundtrack, with Dave replaced by…Lou Reed?). This belt-tastic anthem, written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter when they were scribes for Stax, has been covered so many times, by everyone from Ted Nugent to Tom Jones, that you may have no idea when you were first told to grab the rope.
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